Subordinates benefit from exploratory dominants: response to novel food in cooperatively breeding carrion crows

► Exploring novel resources entails costs such as predation and poisoning. ► Cooperative carrion crows facilitate the access to novel food to their offspring. ► Dominant breeding males made the first contact with an experimental novel bait. ► Offspring fed on baits already explored by their father. ► Living with risk-prone parents may promote offspring delayed dispersal.